


Travesty

by goldarrow



Series: Mirror!verse [2]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 11:10:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20388748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldarrow/pseuds/goldarrow
Summary: Helen makes some alterations in Stephen.Set in the Reset!Stephen 'verse, where Helen has cloned Stephen, using future tech.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The SF team belongs to fredbassett; Doctors Morgan and Grant are mine.
> 
> Disclaimer: Primeval belongs to Impossible Pictures, not me. Unfortunately. Sigh. I mean no harm, I make no profit except satisfaction.
> 
> This chapter includes some descriptions of medical experiments.

“What do you want, Helen?” Stephen asked wearily. 

Lying on the hard metal table with his arms and legs tied down, the only part of his body that Stephen could move was his head. The only things he could see were various bits of equipment, the purposes of which he wasn’t sure he wanted to know, and Helen herself, who was standing at the foot of the table with a slight smile on her face.

“I need your help, Stephen,” she said softly, moving up beside him to stroke his face. “There are things happening, things that will destroy the world unless we can stop them.”

Stephen cursed, jerking his head away from her hand, not even bothered when he thumped it hard on the table. 

“You have got to be bloody kidding me! Every time you come near any one of us you simply fuck us over. I want nothing to do with you.” Stephen kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling, refusing to even look at her. He knew what he would see: Helen, her hair short and artfully tousled, her shirt tight and half unbuttoned to show an extremely impressive cleavage, and her smile, as superior and as slyly provocative as always.

She abandoned her pose and laughed, running her hand down his neck to grip his shoulder. “You have no choice, Stephen,” she said, her voice hardening. “I made you, I own you, and I’ll do what I want with you.” Switching mood almost quickly enough to give Stephen mental whiplash, she continued in an almost crooning tone, “I wish you’d understand how much I want to help. You and Nick, you’re so special to me. I love you both and I can’t stand knowing what’s going to happen to you if you won’t listen.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Stephen whispered, closing his eyes. “Last time we saw you, you were trying to kill Nick. You lie, you manipulate, you toss out a few little snippets of information, and then every time it ends up that what you’ve told us is so far from the full story that it would take a telescope to actually see the truth.” Turning his head to look at her one last time, knowing he was probably signing his own death warrant, he finished, “Come to the ARC, tell us everything you know, truly help us instead of yourself, and I’ll start believing in you again. Until you do that, I want nothing to do with you.” He turned away from her, hoping that she would give up, kill him, and go away. 

At Cheddar Gorge last month, she’d sent her Cleaner clone to shoot Nick. Stephen, a clone himself, had pushed Cutter out of the way and taken the bullet instead. He had died in Nick’s arms, but then he had healed; he had come back, reset mentally and physically to his creation point with no memory of anything that had happened between the moment Helen first woke him in her laboratory and the moment he woke up the second time on the ground at the Gorge. It had taken Connor practically shovelling a quick synopsis of the weeks he’d lost into his ears before he was able to access the memories again. He was terrified of the prospect of that having been a one-off, that this time he would die and not come back; or on the other hand, that he would die and come back with no one to refresh his memory after its reset. But even in his fear, he knew that either of those options was preferable to staying with Helen and ending up being part of her latest scheme.

When Helen grabbed his chin and forced his head around, he saw something in her eyes just for a moment that he couldn’t put a name to. But what was it? He swallowed hard and opened his mouth to ask, but before he could force a word out past his tight throat, she pushed him away with a grunt.

“I give up,” she said sharply. “You won’t help me, and you won’t join me. So, on your head be the results.” Stalking stiffly across the room to the small fridge against the wall, she opened it with a snap and removed a rack of vials filled with various powders and liquids. 

“Hold him,” she snarled, and Stephen saw for the first time that there were two Cleaner clones in the room. 

They marched over to him and leaned their weight onto him, holding him still as he watched Helen’s actions with horror. She was standing at the sink beside the fridge, mixing the contents of the vials together according to a set of instructions posted on the wall. Whatever she was doing was requiring an extreme level of concentration since she didn’t even twitch when he started struggling. Once she had a full vial of the mixture, she warmed it over a burner until it changed colour from its original gold to a pale blue as the fine particles layering the bottom melted and were absorbed into the liquid. The smile that grew on her face when that happened made Stephen’s blood run cold.

She sauntered back to the table, filling what looked to Stephen’s anxious gaze like the world’s largest syringe. “Helen, what is that?” he managed to ask, his voice almost squeaking since his throat felt like an overstretched balloon had taken refuge in it.

She looked calmly at him. “It’s a test,” she said quietly, pushing his sleeve up to bare the vein at his elbow. 

She started the injection slowly, pushing what felt like liquid fire into Stephen’s arm. The fluid was warm, but it wasn’t a normal sort of warmth. It was acid, it was flame, it was scalding steam. He gritted his teeth. 

“You’re the perfect subject,” she continued. “You can’t die. I can test the formula as many times as I need to in order to perfect it.”

“Oh, fuck,” Stephen whispered, his heart stuttering with terror. She did know he’d died. She knew and she was going to use that knowledge against him. He tried to struggle, but the Cleaner clones simply added a little more weight to their grips and he was stuck as fast as if he was in a vice. “What formula? What are you doing to me?”

“Enhancing you,” she said absently, her concentration on what she was doing rather than Stephen’s question, keeping the injection slow and steady. “It’s a great pity that I’ve lost my geneticists.” She smiled suddenly, brightly at him as she pulled the needle out and stroked his cheek. “But with you here, I don’t really need them. I have all the time in the world at this end of history.”

The burn worked its way up Stephen’s arm into his shoulder, then across his chest. “Please,” Stephen whispered, “please, don’t do this,” as what felt like incandescent flames reached his heart and started washing along every artery. In less than a minute, his entire body was an inferno, fire raging through every cell.

He screamed. And screamed again as his mind was washed in a conflagration that turned the world first red, and then black as he fell back onto the table, convulsing, collapsing, dying. Through the horror, he could still feel the clones holding him, and Helen’s gaze hard on him.

xXx

Stephen woke, shuddering. Staring around in shock, he started gasping. He felt horrible. His body was aching all over, and he was hot, so hot. Thirsty. Starving. And where was he? This wasn’t the cage room; it wasn’t even the same building. The walls were wrong, the air tasted strange. Where were the creatures? Why wasn’t he bleeding? He was cold, shivering. What was happening? He was tied down. God, he was hot. No, he was cold, freezing. Shaking, near tears, he called out, “Hello? Is anyone there?” and waited. 

It seemed like an hour before there was a sound, just a slight noise at the door. He turned his head hopefully to look, finally feeling a little more stable. He was still alternating freezing and baking, but each cycle seemed a little less strong. “Hello?” 

The door opened, and he deflated. Helen. Damn it. If Helen was involved, then this wasn’t a good situation. 

“Helen, what are you doing?” he asked. “Let me go.”

She shook her head. “No, Stephen, we’ve been through this already.” Walking close, she pulled out a syringe and rapidly took a blood sample from him. 

Ignoring his continued questions, she turned to a bank of equipment beside the table and placed the vial of blood into a recess on the front. When he kept talking, asking, even begging for answers, she burst out impatiently, “Shut up, Stephen! This is delicate work and I can’t concentrate if you’re wittering on.”

“Just tell me,” he whispered, lost.

She sighed. “In a minute.” It took a little more than a minute, but she finally grunted in satisfaction and wiped her hands. “Okay. The results will only take a few minutes now that I’ve finally managed to get it started.”

Stephen gulped as she stared at him. “W-what results?” he managed.

“The enhancement,” she replied, one eyebrow raised. For the first time since he’d met her so many years ago, she spoke quickly and without being cryptic. “Stephen, we’ve been through this about a dozen times now. You’re a clone. I created you. You can’t die, or at least you can’t die permanently. I’ve been testing a genetic enhancement on you. It kept killing you. Each time, you reset to your original form, to the time when I created you, and I then refined the process and injected you again. I kept doing that until, this last time, you didn’t die. The enhancement finally bonded to your DNA.” She cocked her head, smiling smugly. “So I killed you to see if the enhancement would survive your death and regeneration.”

“I-I die?” he asked shakily, stuck on that one piece of information. “I die and I come back?”

“Yes,” she replied, in an overly patient tone. “You’re a clone, you die, you come back - reset to the last memory that the original ‘you’ had. The cage room.”

“Oh, fuck,” he said softly. “What have you done to me?”

“Improved you,” she said sarcastically. “When did you stop listening? It doesn’t matter, anyway. I needed you for a while. I didn’t have enough people with me that I could afford to lose one for every test of the formula. You’ve been very useful. Console yourself with that.”

“You’re mad.” He tried to sit up, but the restraints still held, no matter how hard he struggled. “Let me go.”

She started to answer, but the machine made a sour sound like a cracked bell and she ignored him as she concentrated on the data now showing on the screen. “Excellent,” she whispered. “It survived.” Turning to Stephen, who was still protesting, she examined him critically. “Stephen, you’re not human. You’re a clone. Your ‘life’ is of no value in the full scheme of things. And I shan’t need you for much longer,” she added musingly. “But I think I’ll keep you around for a while anyway, just in case.”

Stephen went cold as she turned and called for one of her Cleaner clones. Disconnected pictures were jostling for space in his mind: Cutter, Helen, fiery pain, Connor shaking him and speaking rapidly, Helen explaining what she was doing but wearing different clothing. Giddy, eyes blurring, Stephen shook his head with a stifled moan, watching as Helen gave an injection to the Cleaner.

Ten minutes later, he stared wide-eyed as the thick-set man screamed one last time and collapsed. 

Helen was over by the machinery, muttering to herself. “Damn it. Stephen survived. It worked. Why didn’t it work this time? Maybe I should have kept a geneticist, after all.” 

Stephen shuddered. Watching Helen inject the other clone with her dreadful concoction, watching the man writhing in agony, hearing the screams of anguish as he died, had been a nightmare Stephen wished fervently he could wake from. But it wasn’t a nightmare; it was reality. Her voice broke into his thoughts again.

“Right. I need some more tests,” she mused. “There’s something different about the DNA between the two of them. He doesn’t regenerate, Stephen doesn’t regenerate unless he dies, so it’s not that. The last batch didn’t kill Stephen, but it did kill him.” She tapped her lips with one finger. “So, I need to run a full workup on both of them, side by side. There’s something I’m missing using this equipment, something I haven’t pinned down about this formula.” Turning to the door, she called for another clone and ordered him to take Stephen to the lab at the end of the hall.

As the second clone entered the room, not even bothering to glance at the duplicate of himself lying on the floor, Stephen tensed. The Cleaner would have to release Stephen to move him; he wouldn’t ever have a better chance to escape this place. It was now or never.

The moment the last buckle came loose, Stephen lashed out. He was weak, frightened, and slightly dizzy, but he put every bit of strength he had into the blow and he got lucky. The side of his fist caught the Cleaner on the throat, crushing his hyoid bone and dropping him like an ox, gasping for breaths he would never again succeed in drawing. Before Helen could do more than spin around in shock, her mouth opening to call for help, Stephen was off the table and reaching for the clipboard she’d left lying there. He threw it as hard as he could directly at the countertop holding the burner. It sliced across the base of the burner, sending the apparatus skittering down the counter, its flame washing across the bottles and jars of chemicals clustered there.

Stephen ran for the door, staggering slightly, hearing Helen’s scream behind him as the flames raged, fuelled by whatever flammables were stored in that room. And it seemed there were plenty of flammables. He heard a couple of pops and what sounded like a slightly larger explosion, and then the sound of a door slamming on the other side of the room. He ran. Out the door, turning the opposite direction from where he thought Helen might have gone, desperate to get away from that place, from her. Down the corridor, ignoring anyone he saw, he ran faster, gathering strength from somewhere deep inside, from his desperation, from his fear and hate.

Bursting out the main door of the building, he hesitated for just a second to get his bearings. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a glitter, a familiar glimmering in the air. An anomaly. He headed for it at full speed, reeling a little as his energy flagged. He had to get through, get away. Where he was going he neither knew nor cared, as long as it was as far from Helen as he could get.

The cool wash of the shimmering shards across his body gave him a little strength as he passed through to the other side of the anomaly. Pausing for a moment to catch his breath, he looked around. Spaghetti Junction. Anomaly after anomaly caught the sunlight like crystal snowflake ornaments in a shop window, filling the valley in front of him with reflected radiance.

It didn’t really matter which he took; Cretaceous, Permian, Jurassic, it was all one to him right now. Then he stopped, holding his breath as he saw small cairns of different coloured stones in front of six of the glistening gateways. Hoping that the cairns marked safe passages rather than danger, and hoping that a sheer guess would take him through the correct one, Stephen closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and stepped forward through the second anomaly from the right, the deep green jasper calling him.

When the air stabilised around him, cool breeze washing across his skin, he opened his eyes. Then closed them immediately, since the rifle barrel pointed directly at his face wasn’t something he wanted to concentrate on. 

“Jesus, Stephen, you scared the crap out of me!” 

Finn’s voice, a trifle shaky, made Stephen open his eyes again, to look hopefully at the soldiers gathered around him. The entire team seemed to be trying to get close enough to touch him. 

Then Lyle’s voice cut through the restrained clamour. “Back off, lads, give him some space to bloody breathe.” As the others pulled back, the smiling Special Forces lieutenant moved through. “Stephen, good to have you back! What the fuck happened? Never mind, come on. Dane, Fiver, take him back to the ARC. The professor will be over the moon that the lost has been found.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They return to the ARC, with not-so-great results.

The trip back to the ARC made Stephen’s mind reel. It had been obvious to him that his awakening at Helen’s laboratory wasn’t his first, but he hadn’t a clue what most of them were talking about. They knew him, they were happy he was ‘back’, and from the things they were saying, it seemed that Cutter was going to be happy too. Stephen kept his total confusion to himself. He had to find a solid base to stand on if he was going to be able to cope with seeing Cutter again. The last time he remembered seeing his friend had been through the porthole in the door to the cage room at the bunker. Right before he was torn apart. Shaking, Stephen started to hyperventilate as they pulled into the ARC garage. 

He looked up, and Nick was there, waiting at the door with the most hopeful look Stephen had ever seen on his face. A hopeful look that crumpled when Stephen looked back at him and bit his lip.

“She killed you,” Cutter stated flatly.

Stephen nodded. “You know me, then. You know about it. What have I lost?” he asked.

Cutter sighed. “Everything.” Shoulders slumped, he gestured for Stephen to walk with him, and they headed to the conference room. 

When they entered, Stephen barely had time to brace himself before he had an armful of Abby, who whispered harshly as she hugged him hard, “You’ve got to stop this. We can’t keep losing you, damnit!” 

Stephen smothered a chuckle. Whatever he’d lost, it seemed it wasn’t his team and friends. He looked up, and Connor came in close to add to the hug.

“Welcome back, mate,” the young man said.

“Um, thanks,” Stephen replied to both of them, then set Abby down when Lester ostentatiously cleared his throat from the end of the table.

“Yes, your miraculous return is all very delightful, but perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling us exactly where you’ve been for the last two weeks?”

Stephen moved automatically to sit beside Cutter. When the older man flinched a little, Stephen almost sat a seat away instead, but Abby plunked down into it and nodded her head firmly to Stephen’s original target. He raised his eyebrows and obeyed.

When Stephen didn’t immediately start talking, Lester’s eyes narrowed. “What do you remember?” he asked, surprising Stephen when there wasn’t even the slightest hint of sarcasm or vitriol in his tone.

Stephen made a face. “Not much,” he replied, looking around the table at each one of them. “I don’t know what happened. Um, you know I’m a clone?” It took every bit of strength he had not to pull in his shoulders and shrink in anticipation of immediate arrest. When the others simply nodded and Abby patted his hand, he took a deep breath and continued, “I thought she’d only just made me, there in that lab, but I guess I’m wrong?”

Cutter spoke softly. “Yeah, you’re wrong.”

Stephen turned to look at him, seeing a surprising depth of pain in the pale blue eyes. He glanced around, and the others were simply sitting, allowing Cutter to take the lead. “But that explanation is for a little later,” the professor said. “No, Connor, we don’t know what will happen. We have to get his information first.”

The young genius tapped his fingers impatiently on the table, mouth opening and closing a few times before he reluctantly subsided. 

Turning back to Cutter, even more nervous than he had been, Stephen waited for the axe to fall.

“Tell us everything you remember, then we’ll tell you everything you missed,” Cutter said, reaching out to touch Stephen’s shoulder for the first time.

Stephen examined Cutter’s face bit by bit, seeing the pain and the stifled hope, then he sighed and agreed. “Okay.” He talked to the table, unable to look any of them in the eye while he gave a complete and detailed listing of everything Helen had done and as much as he could remember of what she had said while she ran her tests. Half an hour later, when he finally ran down, he was hoarse, his throat was scratchy and dry, and the others were wide-eyed and pale.

“She actually said that she’d told you a dozen times, in those words?” Ditzy asked. The Special Forces medic had been sitting off to the side, so quiet up until now that Stephen almost jumped at the sound of his voice.

Turning to Ditzy, Stephen said, “Yes. But I don’t know if she was exaggerating or not.”

“Let’s hope she was,” Ditzy replied. “The more times the memories were overwritten, the less chance we have of getting them back.” He stood up and gestured to Stephen. “Okay, we need blood. We have to find out what she did to you.”

Stephen stood obediently, but balked at following Ditzy when Cutter expostulated. “Not now! We need to try to get the memories back. The longer we wait, the less chance we have. The blood tests can wait a while. He’s not going anywhere.”

Turning to the medic, Stephen raised his eyebrows in question, only to see Ditzy looking at Lester quizzically. When Lester nodded, Ditzy said, “Okay. When you’re done here, come to medical. I’ll go and get set up. Professor, take it slowly.” He walked out, and Stephen took a deep breath and turned to Lester.

Lester’s mouth quirked in a sideways grin. “Don’t look at me. I actually have work to do. Please don’t run amok, any of you.” Gesturing for Ryan to stay on guard, he straightened his tie and the lay of his suit jacket, and strode from the room.

Everyone sat down, and Stephen looked hopefully at Cutter. “Can you bring the memories back?”

“I don’t know,” the professor replied. “But we’re going to try.” 

Ten minutes later, Stephen was simultaneously shocked and ecstatic. The information he’d just been given was both a dream come true and a nightmare. “We’re together? Together, together?” he whispered, staring at Nick hungrily, and Cutter actually blushed a little at the expression Stephen was aiming at him. 

Stephen was determined to use the biggest metaphorical mallet he could find to beat down any doubts Cutter might be harbouring about Stephen’s desire for him. Having caught his professor, even if he didn’t remember doing so, Stephen wasn’t about to let him go now.

Connor and Abby shared a high five, and even Ryan was grinning. Stephen looked around, blushed a little himself, and stood up. “I don’t know if I’ll ever remember fully; but even if I can’t pull out the details, the feelings are there and there’s a familiarity in a lot of the stories. I still have at least some of the memories, I can tell, but they’re buried.” Turning to Cutter, he smirked. “I’m sure you won’t have any problem reminding me of all the little details, will you?”

Cutter’s face turned even redder at the innuendo, but he grinned back. “I’d love to. But right now, we need to get you to medical, then I’m taking you home. Hopefully some personal surroundings will help you.” Then he sobered. “I just wish you could remember how Helen got hold of you. We have panic buttons, but yours was found abandoned in the back garden the day you disappeared.”

Stephen strained to remember, then shook his head in frustration. “Nope. Not coming out.” Shrugging, he added, “I’ll keep trying.”

They headed down to medical, and Stephen donated what felt like a couple of pints of blood, then Cutter drove them home. Seeing the changes they’d made to Cutter’s house surprised Stephen; from the day he’d first met the professor to the day of the cage room, Cutter’s place hadn’t changed, being dark and cluttered with piles of fossils and books everywhere, but now it was open and airy, light and cheerful.

Stephen’s blink of surprise made Cutter laugh. “Yeah, we’ve done some clearouts in the last six months. Welcome home, Stephen.”

Smiling happily, Stephen walked around, looking at everything, seeing his few possessions mixed in with Cutter’s. It felt like home. He’d always been comfortable in this house, but now it was more than that. He turned to Cutter, and gasped. Just for a moment, he’d felt something, remembered something. He swayed, putting a hand to his head to stop it floating off, and held hard to Cutter as the professor hurried over to brace him. 

“You,” Stephen managed. “You, standing there with a cup in your hand, waving it at me as I hung the picture, slopping tea on the floor and complaining when I didn’t rush to help you clean it up.”

Cutter laughed out loud and pulled him in for a strong hug. “Yes, the week we finished the redecorating. That was the last thing we did. Hanging that bloody dolphin picture of yours.”

Stephen felt his eyes get wet, and held the tears back by force of will. He did, however, draw Nick even closer and bury his face in his lover’s neck. “I’m looking forward to you reminding me of a lot of things tonight,” he managed to whisper, and felt the heat of Nick’s blush against the side of his face.

“That I will,” Cutter’s voice growled in his ear. “That I will.”

xXx

After an extremely successful night, for both memory recovery and emotional reconnection, the two men entered the ARC a trifle later than usual. Following in Cutter’s footsteps, Stephen barely made it through the front door before members of ARC Security surrounded him.

He immediately stopped with a gulp. “What is it?” he asked hesitantly.

Cutter turned back, a look of shock on his face, and joined in. “Are you out of your minds?” he demanded of the black-garbed men encircling his lover.

The lead security guard shook his head and moved between the two men. “Professor, you need to let us handle this,” he started.

Stephen sighed and pulled his arms in to hug himself. “Something’s gone wrong,” he said quietly. He allowed the men to lead him away without a struggle, shaking his head when Cutter made a move to try to stop them. “Find out,” Stephen said. “Please.” His last sight was of Cutter standing with his hand out and a completely gob-smacked expression on his face.

It didn’t take long for Stephen to learn what had him being treated like an unexploded bomb. He was taken straight to the ARC medical centre, where Lieutenant Owen, ARC Medical department head Doctor Morgan, and Captain Ryan were waiting for him. Ditzy gestured for him to take a seat, and Ryan nodded for the security contingent to remain outside.

Stephen sat tentatively, watching them with wide eyes. “Wh-what is it?” he asked shakily. “What did Helen do to me?”

Dr Morgan leaned back in his chair. “What makes you think this has anything to do with Helen Cutter?” he asked.

“Don’t be an idiot, Doctor.” The words preceded the unusually brisk entry of James Lester, with Cutter hard on his heels.

The room was starting to get a bit crowded, but Stephen didn’t mind. Cutter was here, and even if Lester was capable of blistering paint with his words, Stephen trusted him.

Dr Morgan sat up quickly. “Sir James. I was under the impression you were going to be at the Home Office this morning.”

“Yes, so it seems,” Lester replied sardonically. “You really must learn to control your impulses, Doctor. There was no need for this overly theatrical response to last night’s discoveries.”

Stephen stood quickly, noting with concern that Dr Morgan actually flinched backwards away from him. “What? What did she do to me?” he demanded, and watched the doctor’s jaw tighten. Knowing he wasn’t going to get any response from that man, Stephen turned to Ditzy, ready to beg if he had to.

Ditzy came to his rescue with a glance of disgust at the civilian. “Helen’s done something to your DNA, Stephen,” he said quietly. “We don’t know yet what it was, but you don’t display as fully human in the tests anymore.”

Stephen dropped back down into his seat, all the air escaping him in one massive breath. “Bloody hell,” he whispered, eyes turning to seek out Cutter.

xXx

Two days later, they were no closer to answers than they’d been the day Stephen was taken into custody. Ditzy watched Stephen through the exam room window as the clone sat curled up on his bed with his arms wrapped around his legs and his forehead resting on his knees. There was a slight tremor to Stephen’s shoulders that told the medic he was barely holding back some very strong emotions.

Dr Morgan moved up beside him, and Ditzy had to hold back a few strong emotions himself. The civilian physician had been vociferous in his demands that Stephen be held in custody, and that samples be taken of every type of cell and every type of bodily fluid. Ditzy considered that they were lucky that the doctor actually hadn’t actually insisted on a brain biopsy. The medic agreed that they needed the knowledge that the myriad of samples would give them, but he was disturbed by the way the doctor was treating Stephen. As if he were somehow dirty, something to be looked down on.

“You know we can’t trust him,” Morgan said firmly. “She’s turned him into something inhuman. We have no way of knowing what she’s done. She could have put a trigger into him; she could take control of him at any moment and have him destroy us all.”

Ditzy couldn’t control the almost hysterical amusement that the doctor’s words engendered in him. “Jesus, Doctor, and I thought that Special Forces training had made us paranoid.” He turned to grin at Lester and Ryan as they joined the two medical personnel. “Sir, Boss, Dr Morgan thinks Stephen’s been turned into some sort of sleeper agent and is going to kill us as soon as we turn our backs.” 

Lester’s sigh was a joy for Ditzy to hear. The medic been a little concerned that the physician’s high standing in the medical community might hold too much sway over the upper echelons. He should have trusted Lester a little more. The man never took anything for granted; even his double-checks had double-checks.

“My office, ten minutes.” Lester walked off without another word.

Ditzy smiled slightly mockingly at the Doctor. It seemed that the Special Forces medic’s reputation at the ARC trumped the civilian doctor’s standing on the outside.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things start to settle down. Until there's trouble on a shout.

“You must be joking,” Morgan said harshly. “He isn’t human!”

Lester raised his eyebrows again. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d done that in this meeting. His forehead was becoming quite fatigued from the workout. “Dr Morgan, if you can give me any other reason than that for me to keep Stephen sequestered, I will be happy to do so.”

It took a ruthless look from him to make Cutter subside before the man screwed up Lester’s plan. The physician needed to be taken down, but in a manner that left him unable to retaliate effectively.

Judging the depth and duration of his next sigh to perfection, Lester continued, “Yes, Helen Cutter has done something to Hart’s DNA. Yes, there are unknown elements there. But you cannot even identify the source material. And Hart escaped from her, quite obviously before she managed to do anything other than physically modify him. Where is the danger?”

Morgan looked as if he was ready to explode. “He dies! He dies and comes back. He doesn’t remember what she did to him before he came back the last time. She could have implanted any orders with a code phrase or - or something!”

Lester held up a hand to forestall the responses from both Cutter and Ditzy, Cutter’s furious and Ditzy’s amused. Although Cutter was obviously and vociferously still in the dark, the medic seemed to know exactly what game Lester was playing: make Morgan go too far. “Lieutenant Owen, correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Hart reset completely, mind and body?”

Ditzy grinned back. “Yes, he does. The memories can be accessed again, but only if we get there in time. I’d agree with Dr Morgan about that being dangerous,” he slapped Cutter cheerfully on the back as the professor choked, “if not for the fact that he died multiple times when she had him, and his memories are so fragmented that, in my opinion, there’s virtually no chance any implemented ‘code phrase’ could have survived.”

Lester tapped his chin, watching as Cutter finally scrambled onto the same page as the rest of them and sat back, silently glaring at the doctor. Turning his attention back to the civilian, Lester drawled, “So, Dr Morgan, you believe that Stephen Hart is an extreme danger to us, almost a Manchurian Candidate, as it were. Lieutenant Owen, notwithstanding the customary paranoia that is rife amongst Special Forces personnel, you believe he is no danger to us. Professor Cutter, you of course back Hart completely.” 

Standing up, Lester looked at each man in turn, then spoke seriously, allowing not one trace of sarcasm to be discernable. “Stephen Hart is a valued member of this team. What has happened to him is in no way his fault. In spite of your discoveries, he has shown us these last couple of days that he is still Stephen Hart in all ways that matter.” 

At Morgan’s tightened lips, Lester continued. “We will, of course, keep an eye on him out in the field, until there is enough evidence to satisfy everyone that he safe. Captain Ryan, I believe that is your purview.” 

Ryan nodded. “We’ll keep an eye out for him.”

Lester’s lips twitched as he made note of the change in phrasing. It seemed that all of the Special Forces contingent were backing Hart. “Very well. Professor, go get your tracker and take him home.”

Cutter’s rapid exit left a few pieces of paper fluttering. Ditzy and Ryan walked out a trifle more slowly. 

Lester smiled at Dr Morgan. “Doctor, a word.” 

He wouldn’t do this in front of the others, but Morgan had to go. Lord knew the ARC needed to have someone to pull back on the reins regarding health and safety. The teams, both civilian and military, were quite mad at times. And although a willingness on the part of the medical department head to test everything, to question authority, to take the hard decisions were all assets, hysteria on the other hand was not. They needed someone who wasn’t frightened by things he’d never come up against before. 

Morgan had shown these last few days that he wasn’t that someone. He had to be got rid of, but in a way that left him no grounds for retaliation. Lester was actually going to enjoy this; he hadn’t had a chance to fire anyone high-ranking in some time. Lester’s reputation as a ‘government hatchet man’ was thoroughly deserved, and he was quite pleased that he could exercise those muscles again.

Lester’s smile turned a trifle feral as the doctor sat down again.

Five minutes later, Morgan strode from the room and Lester pressed his intercom button. “Lorraine, please start the paperwork for Dr Morgan’s termination. He has decided the ARC is not a good fit for his knowledge and abilities.”

Leaning back, Lester sighed in satisfaction. This had actually turned out to be quite a productive day. “Oh, and Lorraine, more coffee. Lots more coffee.”

xXx

Stephen winced and sped up as he passed the entrance to the women’s showers. Thank God Nick didn’t even own a hair dryer; listening to Abby running hers at the ARC was bad enough after a messy shout. He reckoned he’d go crazy if he had to listen to that whine every evening.

“What’s wrong?” The words were barely comprehensible past the high-pitched sound slicing its way into Stephen’s ears.

He shook his head and squinted at Captain Ryan, who was standing in front of him with a quizzical expression on his face. 

“Sorry,” Stephen replied. “That hair dryer noise goes right through my head.”

Ryan chuckled. “Yeah, it’s pretty obnoxious.” Then he examined Stephen closely enough to make the tracker nervous. “Has it always bothered you like this?”

Stephen stopped and stared. “Crap. No, it hasn’t.” He started thinking, and gulped. “The Hoover. Damn it, Nick was vacuuming the other day and I had to leave. It was giving me a headache.” Stephen swallowed hard. “Is this - could this be an effect of what Helen did?”

Sighing, Ryan replied, “No idea, Stephen. But you’d better let Ditzy know about it, anyway.”

Stephen shivered. “Do you think they’ll -” He couldn’t even finish. The thought of being stuck in the ARC again, being tested, horrified him. But he couldn’t take any chances. They were trusting him to report any oddities, so he had to trust that they wouldn’t incarcerate him.

Ryan grasped Stephen’s shoulder and shook it. “It’ll be okay. With Morgan tossed out, there’s no one left of his mind. You’ll be fine.”

Stephen leaned against the wall and banged his head a few times, holding back a growl of fury by sheer force of will. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he whispered. “Every time I think I’m rid of her, something she’s done to me comes back and bites me in the arse.”

“We all pretty much feel the same way,” Ryan replied seriously. “Now, come on. Let’s get it over with.”

Stephen grinned weakly. “You make it sound like a trip to the dentist.” He opened his eyes, stood up and headed for the infirmary with a sigh. Of course, the route to the infirmary had to pass right by the women’s showers again. Stephen plugged his ears with his fingers this time. It didn’t help much. Neither did Ryan’s grin.

xXx

Ditzy shook his head. “I don’t see anything organically wrong in the x-rays,” he said. “But the hearing test was off the charts.”

Stephen cringed. “That bad?”

“Depends on your point of view,” the medic replied dryly. “Your infrasonic hearing is normal human - meaning pretty much zilch; the sonic range is on the sensitive end of the human norm, so nothing new there; the oddity is that you’ve added some ultrasonic frequencies to your range.”

Stephen grumbled, rubbing his ears. The double-damned fluorescent light over Ditzy’s desk was making his eardrums vibrate. He shook his head. “And so what does that mean, exactly?”

Ditzy shrugged. “Normal human range is about 12 Hz to 20 kHz. Yours is running 11 Hz to 75 kHz.”

“Jesus,” Stephen replied, shocked out of his self-pity. “That’s amazing!”

“You hear better than a dog does.” Cutter’s voice came from the doorway, making Stephen jump.

He frowned. “If I hear better than a dog, why didn’t I hear you coming?” Stephen asked.

“Because you were distracted by the light?” Cutter sounded amused, and Stephen let his annoyance out.

“Wonder-fucking-full,” he snarled. “Not very useful, then, is it?”

“Don’t worry, Stephen,” Ditzy said in an extremely serious tone of voice. “No one expects you to be a superman.”

Stephen’s head whipped around so quickly that he almost kinked his neck. “Wha?” His eyes narrowed as he caught the twitch at the corner of the medic’s mouth. “You bastard,” he said with a chuckle. 

Ditzy waved him out. “For now, we’ll just add this to your records.” Then he called out as Stephen passed through the door. “But let me know if the headaches continue - don’t self-medicate for any length of time.”

Cutter took his hand and led him out. “I’ll make sure of that,” the professor promised, over Stephen’s protests that he actually was an adult, thank you very much, and he really could follow doctor’s orders without a minder. 

He only stopped grumbling when Cutter kissed him and agreed.

xXx

“Maybe we need to transfer you into Maintenance, Stephen,” Abby chuckled. “You can find the bad light bulbs before they even start flickering.” She watched him, grinning as he sulked in the front seat beside Cutter. 

Their latest anomaly shout had interrupted a full-on rant by Stephen about the fucking pain-in-the-ear quality of the ARC lighting. He’d been standing in the atrium, having attracted quite an audience for his unusually forthright tirade, when the alarm had gone off and he’d winced, slapped his hands over his ears, and sat down quickly. Abby had stood by him, patting his shoulder until Connor got the alarm turned off. It hadn’t done much good, since Stephen didn’t stop pouting for the entire time it took to pack up and get to the Hilux.

He was still sulking but at least responding to Cutter’s sallies when they finally arrived at the site. 

Abby jumped out of the Hilux as soon as Cutter pulled to the side of the road on Connor’s signal. They were at Parson’s Copse in the South Downs National Park according to Connor’s maps, and Abby sighed with relief. At least they were out of sight of the bloody Camping and Caravanning Club site they’d passed a few minutes before. Cutter’s comments on the possible proximity of civilian campers had been enlightening, if a trifle profane, and Stephen actually unbent enough to snicker at some of the phrases.

“Have Ryan check to make sure that the road’s closed off,” Cutter said, and Stephen obediently relayed the request to the Special Forces team in the other vehicles, which were still trying gamely to catch up to them. Abby knew from experience that an annoyed Cutter had always considered speed limits to be nothing more than suggestions.

She was still controlling her mirth at their interaction when Stephen walked up beside her and started to pull the rest of their equipment from the back of the truck. He raised an eyebrow at her and shrugged.

“I had a headache,” he said offhandedly. “I get cranky.”

Abby stepped off, heading toward the anomaly as the Special Forces vehicles finally pulled in behind the Hilux. “Yeah, I know,” she said, mock seriously, looking at him over her shoulder as she walked away. “And you love it when Cutter tries to help.” 

His mouth opened to reply but the words never made it out. 

It took a few hours for Abby to actually manage to piece together her own memories of the next couple of minutes. At the time, all she knew was that there was an ear-splitting roar, quite a few yells, she landed very hard on the ground sans any air in her lungs, and then something very large and very heavy suddenly hit the dirt right beside her. 

She sat up, holding her head and gasping in a huge breath, and looked straight into the fading eye of a very large and obviously very carnivorous dinosaur. She squeaked and scuttled backwards as fast as she could. Once she was out of range, she scrambled to her feet and looked around. 

The military contingent was sprinting towards them, although they were slowing rapidly as they seemed to realise they were a bit after the fact. Cutter and Connor were a couple of statues at the edge of the road staring at Stephen, who was standing beside the dead creature with a knife in his bloody hand and a look of mixed horror and confusion on his face.

Abby watched as Ryan walked slowly up to Stephen and spoke quietly to him. Stephen’s confused expression melted and he started to shake as Ryan gently took the knife from his grip. 

Abby recognised it as the gutting knife from the portable necropsy kit, and she turned to look for the case. It was lying open on the ground behind her and she spared a random thought about having to re-sterilise everything before she realised that in the space of seconds, Stephen had somehow managed to open the case, remove the knife, make it across ten metres and. . . 

She gulped as she stared at the creature lying on the ground. It looked huge. She backed away from both it and her fear and started examining it. Bipedal, it must have stood almost 3 metres tall, and with the neck and tail, it was close to 7 metres long. She shuddered. Each of the creature’s front hands had a claw on it that was as long as her entire hand from wrist to fingertips. She would have been disembowelled if even one swipe had connected. She turned her gaze away, feeling slightly ill, and looked wanly at the gaping wound in its twisted neck.

Connor moved up beside her. “Dryptosaurus, late Cretaceous,” he said soberly. “Probably weighed more than a ton.” He wrapped an arm around her as she started shaking again.

“What happened?” she asked. When he gaped at her, she glared at him. “Connor, I had my back to it. What happened?”

He sighed. “It was so quick that no one really saw. One moment you were standing there and Stephen was turning from the truck to greet the Special Forces team, then the Dryptosaurus blew out of the anomaly and headed for you. It was so fast. Stephen dropped everything, and the next moment it was on the ground with its throat cut and its head turned backward, and he was standing over it looking like that.”

They turned together to watch Stephen as Cutter started to wrap an arm around his shoulder. Stephen twisted around, opened his mouth to speak and dropped like a stone, unconscious before he hit the ground.

Within seconds, Ditzy was crouched beside him, looking concerned as Cutter cradled the fallen man. Abby held Connor back as her friend started to run over to them.

“No, Con, let them work,” she whispered urgently. “We’ll just be in the way.” Connor’s look of helplessness and fear wrenched at her, but she took courage from Ryan’s approving glance over at them.

So they stood and watched as Ditzy set up a drip. They could hear him talking to Cutter and Ryan, something about complete exhaustion, total loss of energy, and what the fuck had he been thinking, going after a sodding creature that size with nothing but a sodding knife? 

“Why didn’t the guard team lead?” Ditzy demanded, his voice tight with poorly suppressed fury. 

Ryan shook his head. “We were still organising. Fuck, we’d barely got out of the vehicles when that bastard came through at a dead run.”

Ditzy called for a stretcher. “Well, next time, the civilians stay in their fucking vehicles until we clear the area,” he snapped. “We’re damned lucky we didn’t lose both Stephen and Abby.” He turned to face her, eyes narrow and hard. “And you remember that, damn it. Stop taking stupid chances.”

Abby didn’t have a chance to defend herself before he was supervising Stephen being loaded into the last Special Forces vehicle in the line. Connor bridled beside her, but she grabbed his arm and shook her head at him.

“No, Con, it’s alright. He’s just worried about Stephen.” Taking a deep breath, Abby turned to Cutter and Ryan. “Professor, what do we do now?”

Cutter stared blankly at her for a moment, then shook himself. “We finish the job,” he replied shakily. “Ryan, can you have Finn see if he can find any tracks? We need to be sure this was the only creature that came through.”

Ryan nodded. “Right.” Turning to Abby and Connor, he added, “Make sure you stay with the team. If there are any more of these creatures, we’ll be in a basket of trouble.”

Abby shuddered. “Yeah. Big and fast isn’t easy to handle.” Then she bit her lip as she caught sight of the huge body out of the corner of her eye. “Professor, what are we going to do with the one we already have?”

“Sushi?” Connor suggested, and she smacked him before Cutter could.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They find out what Helen did to Stephen.

Ditzy sighed the sigh of the mightily put-upon as Cutter started another rant. He hated meetings where everyone was up in arms and no one was listening to anyone else. Granted, the last couple of days had been hard on everyone, but this was getting ridiculous. 

Cutter was snarling at their new lead physician for ‘mistreating’ Stephen, Dr Grant was retaliating with quick-fire ripostes in a race to the bottom with him, Lester was sniping at both of them for turning his meeting into a circus, and Captain Ryan was leaning back in his chair with what was perilously close to a smirk on his face. Ditzy simply wished with every fibre of his being that he had current access to something that would make a very large ‘bang’. That’d show them.

Since he couldn’t get hold of any external noisemaking equipment, he yelled, “Shut up!” at the top of his lungs. 

Dead silence and wide eyes greeted his explosion. Well, it wasn’t a bang, but it would do. He took over, not giving a flying fuck about either rank or protocol.

“Professor, Stephen is fine. He is a fucking adult and he agreed to the tests. Doctor, with all due respect to your medical background and desire for knowledge, Stephen is a valued member of our team here and should be treated as such. Sir,” and here Ditzy faltered. What could he say? James Lester was a law unto himself. “Sir, might I remind you of oil and fire and the inadvisability of throwing the former on the latter?” When Lester’s blank expression melted into sardonic amusement, Ditzy glared at him for good measure, and turned to Ryan. “Anything to add, Boss?”

Ryan shook his head, “Not a thing, Lieutenant. I agree with every word.” He nodded for Ditzy to continue.

“So, to recap,” Ditzy said calmly, looking each man in the eye in turn, “the results of the tests regarding the modifications to Stephen Hart’s DNA are: when at rest or in non-exertive movement, he is within normal human parameters in all physical areas with the one exception of his hearing, which reaches well into ultrasonic range.” His eyes dropped to the report in front of him. “However, when taxed under extreme conditions, he is capable of movement that is five times faster than human norms, and his strength is equivalent to that shown by an elite level or top-flight Olympic weight-lifter.”

Ditzy glanced up at a muttered curse from Cutter, but continued without comment when the professor subsided. “In spite of these ‘enhancements’, as Helen Cutter referred to them, he is in no way a ‘superman’.” This time, he stared at Dr Grant, who had his lips pursed but who was nodding in reluctant agreement. “The use of that level of speed or strength is extremely hard on him physically. He can keep it up for a maximum of 90 seconds before he’s down, either simply exhausted or actually suffering from hypoglycaemic shock. And that’s if he starts off well nourished and fully hydrated. If he hasn’t eaten or drunk recently, he’s only good for about 30 to 45 seconds.”

The medic closed the folder and looked at Lester. “Sir, I hate to even think about this possibility, but,” he hesitated, “do we still have examples of the Future Predator DNA?” As he’d anticipated, Cutter flew up into the boughs faster than Stephen could now throw a knife.

They all waited patiently until Cutter, finally noticing that no one was reacting in the slightest to his rant, turned slightly pink and collapsed back into his chair looking lost. Ditzy sighed and continued to look to the head of the ARC. Lester gazed soberly back at him, but aimed his question at the physician. “Doctor Grant?”

The doctor nodded. “Yes, we still have Future Predator samples.” He looked over at Cutter with a sympathetic expression. “Professor, believe me, no one wants to destroy Stephen. But we do need to find out what he can do, and what the effects are on him and, by extension, the ARC.”

Cutter nodded, still staring at the table. When Lester waved them out the door with the instruction to ‘find out’, Ditzy headed for the infirmary with Dr Grant. They had more work to do. He glanced back to see Cutter unmoving, with Ryan talking quietly to him and Lester standing in the background, arms crossed and fingers stroking his lips as he eyed the professor keenly.

xXx

Stephen lay on the bed in the infirmary, staring blankly at the ceiling. It had been awful to find out that he was a clone, worse to find out that he was some sort of bizarre thing that couldn’t die. But this, this was just too much. For some reason, he could have handled any other modification; any other ‘enhancement’. But not this. Not that creature. He shuddered in revulsion.

When Ditzy told him what Helen had done to him, what she’d re-made him into, he’d made a run for the sink and thrown up hard enough to regurgitate what tasted like the curry from last week. The medic had held him, talking all the while, telling him that the modifications were minor, tiny even; that the Future Predator genes were completely recessive to Stephen’s own genes. He’d held Stephen until he calmed down enough to accept what he was hearing, then he’d helped Stephen back to bed and left to report to Lester that Stephen did, indeed, carry Future Predator genetic material.

Stephen squeezed his eyes shut, curled up and hugged himself, trying to hold back his need to vomit again by sheer force of will. Before this, he might have been a clone but at least he’d been human. Adding in a death-punched reset button, yeah, that was pushing it, but still, he felt he could still count himself as human. Cutter had helped with that. He didn’t treat Stephen any differently, in fact, he had seemed almost relieved at the idea that Stephen would keep coming back. 

But this, this was completely different. Stephen held out his hand and gazed at it. It still looked human, it felt no different than it had before. At least he thought so. He sat up and hugged his knees to his chest. How did he know what he’d felt like before Helen did this to him? He had only fragments of memories from that time. 

Biting his lip, leaning his head back against the wall, he sat and waited for them to decide what they were going to do with him. 

“Stephen?” Cutter’s voice was as soft as the touch he gave Stephen’s shoulder.

Stephen shuddered and pulled away, eyes closed. He didn’t want to see anyone. He knew, from the length of time it had taken for Cutter to show up, that they’d had trouble deciding whether he was human enough to stay free.

“Stephen!” Cutter’s tone sharpened. “Snap out of it, man.”

When Stephen listlessly opened his eyes, Cutter grasped his chin and turned his head; Stephen didn’t bother fighting it. He expected to see disgust, annoyance or frustration on Cutter’s face, but he didn’t. He saw affection and a slight case of exasperation, nothing more. Stephen swallowed and his vision blurred for a moment, forcing him to blink hard to clear the threatened tears.

“It’s okay,” Cutter said, voice soft again. “The doctors have consensus. They say you’re going to be fine.”

Stephen huffed bitterly. “And it took three solid hours to decide that I’m not some sort of lethal monster?”

“Huh. No, it took three solid hours of arguing over what counts as human norm, what doesn’t, and how far out from the centre you are on every tiny little thing.” Cutter shook his head ruefully. “I thought I could get obsessed about minutiae, but Dr Grant takes the cake even over me.”

“What?” Stephen was getting interested in spite of himself. “I don’t understand.”

“We spent two and a half of those three hours going over your test results and the genetic mapping, correlating every figure with human norms and what we’d discovered were the Future Predator’s capabilities, then deciding exactly how much anaerobic activity within the muscles would trigger the hypoglycaemic reaction, and at what point Helen’s little enhancements actually kick in. . .”

Stephen gaped at him. “Are you joking? Lester put up with that?”

“Of course not,” Cutter replied with a snort. “He left at the beginning, right after Lieutenant Owen told him you were still human in spite of the enhancements, and that you were no danger to any of us.”

Not able to look Cutter in the eye yet, Stephen picked at a loose thread on the sheet. 

Cutter reached out and covered Stephen’s hand with his own. “Stephen, believe me, we don’t see you any differently. Well, maybe we do, a little.”

Stephen cringed. Here it came. Cutter’s hand was warm, his voice was gentle, and he was about to tell Stephen that it was over between them, that Stephen was going to spend the rest of his life as an incarcerated test subject. Then Stephen’s head jerked up and his eyes widened as Cutter’s next words threw him for a loop.

“If you hadn’t been enhanced, Abby would be dead right now,” Cutter said, rubbing the back of Stephen’s hand. “There was no one close enough to save her but you. And if you’d still been pure human, you wouldn’t have been fast enough or strong enough to do the job.”

Stephen stared, wanting to believe, hoping for truth. Cutter gave it to him.

“You’ve always been valued, Stephen, and now you’ve added a couple of extra assets. That’s all there is to it.”

Staring at Cutter, Stephen smiled weakly. And when Cutter leaned in and kissed him, he finally allowed himself to believe. There was nothing being held back in Cutter’s kiss, his lips and tongue tasting, feeling, possessing Stephen’s senses until he forgot even how to breathe.

“Believe,” Cutter whispered as he came up for air.

“I do,” Stephen finally responded, with a slightly watery smile. “I do.” And he leaned in to return the favour.

xXx

“Here, try this.”

Stephen looked up from his report and leaned back rapidly as Abby stuck the glass under his nose. “Bloody hell, Abby, that smells horrible!”

“Oh,” she replied, looking disappointed. “It’s an energy drink. I’ve been working with the medical teams to come up with something you can use to maybe stop you from collapsing if you have to kick-start yourself. We’re planning on a ‘before’ drink and an ‘after’ drink.”

Taking pity on her, Stephen accepted the glass and sniffed it gingerly again. After a slight shudder that he couldn’t suppress, he took a sip. And was surprised. “It’s not bad,” he said. “Smells disgusting, but it tastes pretty good.” He took a full swallow and stared at the slightly muddy-looking concoction in the glass. “It does taste good. Thanks, Abby.”

She grinned happily at him. “That’s the ‘before’ drink. It’s designed for maximum energy and hydration in case you need to move quickly.”

Stephen gave her a slightly sidelong look and followed it up with a duplicate at the drink. “And just how many calories are in it?” he asked, wiggling the glass.

Handing him a slightly shifty look in return, she replied, “Enough to keep you going.”

“Great. That means if I drink it regularly, I’ll weigh as much as Fiver,” - “Oi,” said the soldier in question as he passed by - “but without the muscle,” Stephen grinned at Fiver and received a rude gesture along with a grin in return.

Abby giggled. “Maybe, yeah, you should skip the chips on anomaly outings.”

“I don’t eat chips on the ‘outings’,” Stephen replied huffily. “That’s Connor; and you snitching from him.”

“Well, anyway, if you maybe carry it in a bottle with you, you’ll have time to toss some down if something happens.”

He agreed. “Thanks, Abby. What about the ‘after’ drink?”

“That, we’re still working on,” she said, patting his shoulder as she took the glass from his hand.

He let her get almost to the door before calling after her, “Do you think you could make it smell a little bit less like something died?”

Abby mimicked Fiver’s gesture and laughed as she passed out of the room. “We’ll do our best!”

xXx

“Um, Stephen, have you got a minute?” Connor’s voice held slightly more than its usual tentative note.

Stephen grinned to himself. The last few days had been enlightening, to say the least. 

Abby’s offer of energy drinks had been only the beginning. It had been followed in rapid succession by first Lyle then Blade offering to spar with him, then Finn offering to hit the target range with him, and finally Fizz, Fiver and Kermit offering to work out with him. When he asked Ditzy about it during his weekly check-up, the medic simply grinned and told him that since there was now as much chance that he’d save the SF team’s arses as there was that they’d save him, they simply wanted to make sure he was up to the task.

Stephen stared at him for a moment, gobsmacked, then burst into laughter. Ditzy then told him that Ryan had been in making subtle hints about morning runs. Stephen’s laughter trailed off as the real reason behind all of this finally started to hit home.

“They’re really saying they don’t care about what happened,” Stephen said softly, and Ditzy patted his shoulder. 

“I wondered how long it would take for the penny to drop,” he replied, smirking. “Go, re-connect with everyone. You need it, they need it. Now, get out before I decide to take your temperature the hard way.”

Stephen chuckled and scarpered before the threat could become reality.

Now, sitting and looking up at a nervous Connor, he had to smile. “I’ve more than a minute, if you need me,” he told the young man, setting his laptop to the side and waving Connor to the seat across from him. “What’s up?”

Connor settled tentatively into the chair, holding his laptop and a slightly lumpy bag tightly to his chest. “I, um, I heard you the other day, about the lights hurting your ears -“

Stephen winced. “I think everyone in the ARC heard me,” he said apologetically. “I’m sorry about that. It’s not anyone’s fault, and it’s not like anything can be done about it.”

“But there is,” Connor said quickly. “Well, maybe not here, but the transformer noises and stuff outside, I’ve seen the way you flinch sometimes, when we’re passing them on the roads, you only seem to be comfortable right out in the country, in the woods where there’s no electrical stuff - “

Wide-eyed, Stephen interrupted, “Connor, breathe!”

Connor subsided, looking slightly confused and a trifle hurt.

Stephen reached out. “Are you saying you’ve come up with a way to help?” he asked hopefully.

Nodding happily, Connor pulled what looked like a slightly oversized headset from his bag. “Yeah, I think so. This headset has a suppressor in it. It should blank the frequency of the transformers and stuff.” 

Taking it from him, Stephen examined it closely. “Does it override all ultrasonics?” he asked, slightly concerned.

“No, just the frequencies that are connected to electrical equipment,” Connor replied, staring judiciously at the apparatus. “I wanted to stop you from hurting, but not handicap you.”

A quick side glance at Connor showed Stephen that he was completely serious. It seemed that the others had actually acclimatised to Stephen’s changes faster than he had, if Connor was considering it a ‘handicap’ for Stephen not to be able to hear higher frequencies than a bloody dog could. As he examined the headset, he found his eyes growing moist again. 

Holding it in his hand, he looked at Connor. Deliberately couching it in Connor’s own preferred phrasing, he whispered, “Thanks, mate. No one else could have done this.” 

Connor’s eyes lit up, and he replied, “No problem. Happy to do it! When will you be trying it out?”

Stephen laughed. “Next anomaly, I reckon.”

The ADD blared its alarm, and Stephen added, “Which looks like right now!” Stuffing the headset into his pocket, he pulled Connor to his feet, and joked, “Are you sure you didn’t do that?”

Connor grunted as they ran for the atrium, “Nope. Not me.” Then he grinned widely, if slightly breathlessly. “But it’s perfect timing!”

“Yes, it is,” Stephen said as Connor slid to a stop and plumped down into the chair without even a pause.

Abby ran up beside them and with a wide grin and a flourish, handed Stephen an energy drink. He stared at it, laughed, and drank it down, happy that she’d actually managed to improve the smell.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen's changes come in handy

“Oh, wow.” Abby stared around her in mingled apprehension and delight. 

“Oh, fucking hell,” was Lyle’s reaction as he followed her through the anomaly.

They moved up to flank Ryan, Blade and Stephen, who had led the way through the anomaly. Connor and Cutter, trailed by Finn, Fiver, Fizz and Kermit, joined them.

“Spaghetti Junction,” Connor whispered, almost reverently. “Professor -“

“Aye,” Cutter responded as he walked up to stand silently beside Stephen. 

Abby stayed a little behind, watching them. Cutter wasn’t paying nearly as much attention to their surroundings as she thought he would, considering the number of anomalies twinkling in the air around them. But then, taking into account that Stephen was standing stock-still and almost vibrating with tension, she supposed that Cutter could be forgiven his lack of enthusiasm for their current situation.

Idly wondering why all of the men were now doing their best imitations of the waxworks in Madame Tussauds, she started looking around. After counting 25 anomalies in their current valley alone, and catching glimpses of at least eight more over the top of the hill to the east, she sighed gustily and pulled out a notebook to draw a quick map. Once she was done with that, she cocked her head at the men, who were now in a serious huddle right in front of their home anomaly. Deciding not to interrupt what looked like turning into a long term discussion, she pulled out her mobile and activated the camera. Walking around, she took video of each anomaly from all sides, and once she noticed the piles of stones beside a few of them, she added those to the video and her physical notes.

By the time she finished with the closest groups of anomalies, the men were breaking out of their cluster. Lyle, who had clearly been keeping both an eye on her and an ear on the team, gestured for her to join them.

“Yeah?” she said as she slid between Kermit and Connor. She added as she handed her mobile to Connor, “I need that back, Con. Just take the vid, okay?”

He grinned at her and plugged in the cable. “Right, no problem.” Within seconds, he was neck-deep in analysing the data and she was free to join the men.

“What is it, Professor?” she asked.

Cutter stared blankly at her for a second, before shaking his head as if to break loose the reason they’d wanted her. “Oh. Yeah. Abby. Stephen thinks he knows which anomaly he came through when he escaped from Helen. Connor’s going to stay here to analyse as many of these anomalies as he can; Finn and Kermit are staying to guard him. Which would you like to do: stay here, or go through the anomaly with us?”

Abby caught her breath. Just having seen the Spaghetti Junction was more than she thought she’d ever get again after that awful future place, but now Cutter was offering her a protected excursion? With Special Forces backup and a scientific team? Yeah, like she’d turn that down!

“I’d like to go,” she responded, proud that her voice wasn’t shaking in the combined excitement and nerves she was feeling.

Maybe she hadn’t been as controlled as she thought she had, because the grin that had been threatening to break loose on Lyle’s face finally escaped. She glared at him. For some reason, it didn’t faze him at all.

They followed Stephen through the anomaly that he swore would lead to Helen’s laboratory, Abby holding her breath as they passed into the future. None of them knew what to expect; they were heading for Helen’s time, after all.

Once through, Abby was met with a rather disappointing sight. They were on the edge of a compound made up of about 20 buildings, all of which seemed perfectly normal to her eyes. The buildings were standard brick and glass, nothing ‘advanced’ about them at all. In fact, many of them were kind of old-fashioned, more like something from the 50s or 60s than what she thought a laboratory of the future would look like.

She hung back as Stephen pointed to the single-storey brick building straight ahead. “That’s it,” he said quietly, and the military team unhooked their weapons and held them ready. 

The area was deserted; there were no people, no animals, no birds in the few trees that struggled to survive in the hot, dry air. Surrounded by alert soldiers, Abby and Cutter followed Stephen across the pavement, into the building, down the long bare corridor, and through the doors of Helen’s lab. 

“Damn,” Lyle said in awe as the carnage greeted them. “When you fucking trash a place, Stephen, you fucking trash it.”

The room they were in was a wreck. The walls were scorched, half of the ceiling had collapsed onto the floor, making footing hazardous, and the diagnostic equipment and computers were only recognisable as anything more than lumps by their general shapes and locations. The material they were made of must have been particularly susceptible to heat.

Lyle and Blade picked their way across the room to the door on the other side. A rapid glance through had Blade shaking his head as he pulled back. “Nothing, boss, same as here. Total rubbish pile.” He took another, longer look. “Hang on a sec -“ 

Abby held her breath as he slid sideways through the opening and disappeared. Sounds of rummaging followed, and Blade reappeared, looking slightly sooty. Slapping the black dust from his combats, he held out a fireproof metal box to Ryan.

She moved closer to look over the captain’s elbow as he opened it. It contained a small notebook and what looked like a palm-sized computer, which did nothing when Lyle reached out and punched the red button on the top. 

Abby had to hold back a snicker as Cutter sighed. “Well, now that we haven’t been blown up or electrocuted by the strange piece of equipment from the future which shouldn’t be mucked about with, I think we should leave.”

Feeling seared herself by the tag-end of Ryan’s glare at his lieutenant, Abby chimed in, “It doesn’t look as if we’re going to find anything.”

“Agreed. Fiver, Fizz, check out the other buildings on the right. Make sure there’s nothing connected with Helen’s lab. Blade, Lyle, same on the left. Once we’ve established that, we destroy this building.” Ryan turned to Cutter. “Professor, I don’t think we need to destroy the entire compound, just the places Helen’s been using. Concur?”

Cutter responded absently, nose buried in the notebook. “Concur, Captain.” Then he blinked and looked up, catching Abby’s attempt at suppressing her smile. “Yes, Captain,” he said, more firmly. “We only destroy what we must, but we take down anything that Helen’s touched. If she did leave anything behind, we make sure it’s no longer there if she comes back to use it again.”

Abby waited by the anomaly with Cutter, feeling more and more creeped out by the moment as the Special Forces teams checked the other buildings, reported negative results in the rest of the compound, and then set the charges in Helen’s lab. She swore she could feel eyes on her, and if his fidgeting was any indication, Cutter was also starting to sense something ‘off’ about this place. 

She was a finger-width shy of yelling for them to bloody hurry up when Lyle backed out of the doorway, unreeling a cable. He stopped after a few metres and hooked up the detonator. The rest of the team exited the building, and after a quick head-count, Lyle sang out the warning and pressed the button.

There was a slight pause, then the building shuddered and smoke and dust poured out of every window. Lyle stood up, reeled in what was left of the cable, and stuffed the lot into Blade’s pack.

“Right, boss,” he said briskly. “Nothing left for her to work with unless she can restore machines from dust.”

Ryan nodded, looking around as tensely as Abby was by now. “Okay, let’s get back through. I don’t like this place.”

Abby’s nerves weren’t soothed at all when Lyle suddenly glanced over his shoulder and muttered, “Tom, my thumbs are itching fit to bust.”

Ryan stared at him and called out, “Everyone, through the anomaly, now! If you’re not already carrying it, don’t bother to pick it up. Go. Go. Go.”

Infected by whatever alarm the captain was feeling, the entire team rushed back through the anomaly, Blade and Finn trotting backwards with weapons pointing straight into the circling shards as they emerged.

xXx

Stephen looked around rather breathlessly. Connor was standing stock-still and staring at them wide-eyed, with Finn and Kermit beside him imitating a couple of owls as they tried to look in all directions at the same time. Everyone else was gathered a few metres from Helen’s anomaly, watching tensely as the glittering shards drifted serenely in their slow circular dance.

An odd sound caught his attention. He checked the others; no one else was reacting. Suddenly terrified, he ripped off his headset and spun around in a circle. There. Behind the anomaly at the base of the hill. Something odd, something making strange sounds: peculiar little bleeps, clicks, pops and whistles. Stephen stepped silently away from the others, eyes fixed on the direction the noises were coming from. 

He waved slightly, catching Kermit’s attention, and moved slowly towards the sound with the soldier following him. There was a sudden screech, horribly loud, so loud that it felt like it was going to split his head open. Stephen fell to his knees, then dropped flat on the ground as the Special Forces troops opened fire on the Future Predator that was suddenly rushing toward them seemingly out of nowhere.

Seven assault rifles pumped bullets at the creature with almost no effect. It was so incredibly fast, bounding side to side in classic evasive manoeuvres, that most of the rounds missed it completely. It was almost on Abby when a head shot by Finn finally managed to take it down.

Everyone was keyed up in reaction, and Abby was gulping huge breaths in as she stared at the creature. She looked around rather helplessly and complained, “Why do they always head straight for me?”

Stephen started to chuckle in relief when the sound started up again and another Predator leapt over the anomaly beside Connor and landed two paces away from the young man, who squeaked and curled around Abby, muttering, “Maybe not just you.”

No one in the Special Forces team could get a shot; the creature was too close. “Connor, hit the ground!” Ryan yelled, but there was no time.

Stephen took a deep breath and pulled his Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife, a gift from Blade to match his own when Stephen had managed to win their last training bout.

He took a step toward the creature and whistled. It turned and leapt at him, mouth open and clawed forelimbs stretching out. He took another step sideways, luring it farther away from the others. Once it was in reach, forelimb scything towards his stomach to disembowel him, he stepped in closer and sliced across the thing’s wrist. Before the creature could react, he spun back and raked his knife across its abdomen. Blood spurted from both wounds and the creature screamed and writhed.

Stephen started to flinch away from the sound tearing through his head, but managed to steel himself to finish the job. A quick slice across its throat, and the creature folded to the ground in front of him.

He stilled, and realised that he was breathing hard, he felt extremely nauseous, and the rest of the team was standing, staring silently back and forth between him and the dead predator. Abby was the first one to move, pulling a thermos from her pack and walking slowly over to him. Stephen sat down hard, thinking how much she looked as if she was soothing a potentially dangerous wild animal.

“I’m okay,” he managed, slightly shakily. “At least, I think so.” He wiped his arm across his face, and grimaced at the blood that was now smeared across it from the saturated material. “Oh, yuk. Gross.”

His reaction did what he’d hoped it would: everyone relaxed and started talking at the same time. Stephen allowed Abby to put an arm around his shoulder and hold the thermos for him to drink. 

“I really am okay,” he said softly.

“I know,” she replied, “but let me thank you anyway. Please?”

A damp handkerchief was dangled in front of his face by a still slightly wide-eyed Lyle. “Here, you look a bit too gory for the children.”

Chuckling, Stephen took the cloth and wiped his face and hands. “Thanks.” He looked over at Cutter, who was talking to Ryan but looking longingly at Stephen. Stephen nodded back and stood up slowly, allowing Abby and Lyle to assist. Gaining strength and stability as the trio made their way over to the leaders, Stephen checked the rest of the team. Connor was staring at his laptop screen, face pale and hands shaking a bit, and the rest of the Special Forces unit were spread out around their little clearing, all facing outward on high alert.

“I know, Captain, but we can’t leave them a clear trail back to our home.” Stephen could hear the frustration in Cutter’s voice as they neared the discussion.

“I have an idea,” Stephen said, and the two men turned to look at him.

Cutter stepped forward and reached out. “Stephen,” was all he said, but it was enough.

Stephen clasped his hand and stepped close. “We need to find a scent to override our own. We wipe out the trail through our anomaly, and put that same scent in front of as many anomalies as we can get to quickly. They won’t know which one we went through, and they’re intelligent enough not to bother trying one after the other after the other.”

Ryan nodded. “Makes sense. What scent?”

Connor interrupted. “Naphthalene.” He looked around at their surprised faces. “Main ingredient in mothballs. Bats hate it.”

Stephen raised his eyebrows and Connor looked sheepish. “I looked it up after our first encounter.”

At Cutter’s nod, Ryan sent Fiver and Kermit back through their home anomaly with orders to return with either pure naphthalene or mothballs if they couldn’t get hold of the compound.

Finn and Fizz were still eyeing Stephen carefully, and it was starting to get to him. It seemed that their talk about him being even more of an asset now sounded good when they were just talking about it, but seeing evidence in front of their eyes was something else. He was quite obviously freaking them out. Stephen sighed internally and sank to the ground. 

“Stephen, are you okay?” Cutter had dropped down with him, and held him hard.

“A little tired. Slightly shaky.” Stephen rubbed his eyes. “How long did it take?” he asked.

Ryan chuckled. “Less than five seconds. You freaked us out, Stephen. You were moving so fast you were a blur.” The captain glanced around, raised an eyebrow and his voice, and continued, “Oh, and by the way: thanks. We didn’t have the shot.”

Stephen smiled wearily, then followed the captain’s gaze to Finn and Fizz, who were looking slightly shamefaced. Finn nodded. “He’s right, Stephen. Yeah, I’m freaked, but it’s freaked in kind of a good way. So, thanks.”

Stephen’s smile widened as he took in the expressions on the faces around him. Taking a deep breath, he asked, “So, can I kill Helen the next time I see her?”

Cutter’s shocked, “Stephen!” was overridden by Ryan’s, “I don’t see why not,” and Lyle’s, “Get in line.”

Cutter deflated. “I suppose that we can put the Home Office ‘shoot on sight’ order into our standing orders as well.” 

Stephen chuckled and rested his head on Cutter’s shoulder. “Thanks,” he whispered, and Cutter squeezed him tighter as Fiver and Kermit arrived with a couple of cans of Naphthalene. 

Lyle’s surprised eyebrow made Kermit grin. “Local garden shop, three miles down the road,” he stated proudly, and the lieutenant chuckled.

They made short work of sprinkling small amounts of the compound in front of every anomaly in the bowl of the valley, and a few that twinkled up the sides of the hills, for good measure.

“Right,” Ryan ordered, “time to go home.”

They passed through with Kermit at the tail, shaking the last of the naphthalene behind him.

“Finn, Blade, Fizz, stick around until this bastard closes. Stay behind the vehicle, just in case. Everyone else, back to the ARC.” Ryan waved them to their vehicles.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things work out in the end.

The other team members split off at the entrance of the ARC to make their reports, while Stephen, moving slightly gingerly, headed for the infirmary with Ditzy. He could tell that the medic was watching him carefully, so he did his best to force ease into his steps. By the time they arrived at the infirmary and he hopped onto the bed, he was moving smoothly again.

Ditzy nodded. “Looks like your muscles stiffened after the exertion, but loosened up again when you started moving.”

“Yeah. Sitting still on the ride back made me seize up,” Stephen said, stretching mightily. “I’m better now.”

Without warning, Ditzy grabbed his hand and stabbed his finger with a needle. Stephen flinched. “That hurt,” he complained, watching the medic place the tip of a glucose test strip onto the resulting bead of blood. 

Ditzy snorted as he stuck the strip into the reader. “Would you rather I took an entire vial of blood and sent it to the lab?”

“You’re going to anyway,” Stephen grumbled, and Ditzy added insult to minor injury by laughing in his face.

“Yes, I am,” the medic stated cheerfully, blatantly ignoring Stephen’s best try at an impressive scowl. “But, at least if I check your blood sugar this way, you’re not going to have to stick around here while we wait for the results to come back.”

“I’m fine.”

Ditzy smiled at him and waved the strip in the air. “Yes, you are. Your blood sugar is a little low, but you’ve always had a tendency toward hypoglycaemia, so I’ll let it go. Just get a good meal and some rest, and you should be fine by the morning.”

Stephen’s eyes widened as the medic then stuck another needle into his arm and drew a rather extraordinary amount of blood out of it. “Ouch again. And I could have told you that myself.”

“But then I wouldn’t have had the chance to earn my keep.”

Laughing, Stephen responded, “At least you didn’t say you would have a chance to ‘poke me’.” 

Ditzy stared at him. “I guarantee it was hard to resist saying that,” he replied with a smirk.

Stephen slumped. “Never mind. Point to you.”

“Out,” the medic ordered, waving the vial at the door. 

Stephen obeyed with alacrity, heading out to search for Cutter so they could go home.

xXx

Cutter let the front door swing shut behind him, finally relaxing a little after the insanity of the day. When Stephen looked at him with concern, he dredged up a smile. “Just tired,” he said. “Letdown from the fear that I’d lost you again.”

Stephen grinned cheekily at him. “You keep forgetting. You can’t lose me anymore.”

Cutter grunted. That was mostly true. But the fear still remained. The fear that someday Stephen would be too badly injured to regenerate, or that his brain would suffer damage that would stop his memories from being restored. He came back out of his slight funk to see Stephen looking nervously at him. Damn. The last thing he needed was for his lover to think that Cutter was having second thoughts now that they’d seen exactly what Stephen was capable of.

Scrubbing his head with stiff fingers to try to get some circulation back, Cutter yawned. “I know. Or at least my mind does. My stomach, not so much. You scare the crap out of me whenever you pull something like that.”

Stephen’s nervous expression melted into amusement. “Yeah, sorry. I didn’t actually have a lot of time to warn you.”

“Huh. No time at all, I’d say.” Cutter held out his arms and Stephen stepped into them. Holding his lover close, Cutter whispered, “It’s okay, though. We made it out in one piece, and if given a choice between warning and saving, go for the saving every time.”

Stephen chuckled against his neck, warm breath on his skin making him shiver. “I’ll remind you of that, next time I scare you.”

Cutter kissed him and pulled back. “Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m bloody starving. We need to make a start on supper.”

The ringing of the doorbell and Stephen’s smug grin made him frown. “What are you up to?” he asked suspiciously.

Stepping away, Stephen pulled his wallet from his pocket. “I called for Chinese delivery before we left the ARC,” he replied smugly. 

Cutter raised his eyebrows. “Now, that was brilliant. I’ll get some plates.” He headed for the kitchen, leaving Stephen to answer the door and pay for the food.

An hour later, they sprawled, tangled together, along the huge sofa in the sitting room. Cutter yawned as Stephen snuggled closer.

“Ready for bed?” he asked, and the cobalt eyes focussed drowsily on him.

“Yeah, I guess.” Stephen gave him a quick peck and stood up. “If we don’t go to bed now, I won’t have enough energy for fun.” He sauntered out of the room, leaving Cutter gaping after him, wondering just when he’d lost the thread.

Cutter quickly tidied the room, dumping the dishes in the sink and the empty takeout packets in the rubbish bin, then climbed the stairs to their bedroom. Opening the door, he stopped and stared as his mouth went dry and his blood made a rapid dive southward.

Stephen had tossed the duvet back, and was lying on the bed completely naked, his hands cradling his head and his eyes closed. He was breathing slowly and deeply, and with each inhalation his cock was hardening a little more. Cutter watched, his breaths unconsciously synching with Stephen’s, until Stephen was fully erect and shifting slightly on the mattress.

“My God, Stephen, you’re beautiful,” Cutter whispered brokenly, and Stephen’s eyes opened and he held out his hand and whispered in return, “Show me,” and Cutter’s heart almost broke at the ache and apprehension showing in the cobalt depths.

Cutter slid into the bed beside him and wrapped his arms around the square shoulders. Tucking Stephen’s face into his neck, he spoke passionately into the ear next to his mouth. “Stephen, it doesn’t matter what you were, or what Helen did to you. You’re mine now. And Helen has tripped herself up with this one. She’s made you into someone who actually has a chance of taking her down.”

Stephen pulled back and frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

Laughing, Cutter cupped Stephen’s face between his hands. “The last couple of times we’ve met, she’s been too fast for us to catch up with her.” He grinned evilly. “Now, she won’t be.”

Stephen gaped at him, then beamed back, “Bloody hell, you’re right. I can out-run even her.”

“Exactly,” Cutter replied, his grin widening as his hand started travelling down the long body. “Now, I believe we have a couple of problems to take care of.”

He wrapped his hand around their cocks, squeezing them together and stroking lightly. Stephen’s eyes crossed before they slid closed and he moaned. Cutter pushed him onto his back and sealed their mouths together. Moaning again, Stephen opened his mouth and allowed Cutter to tangle their tongues together without a fight. Cutter took control, mapping Stephen’s mouth with his tongue, tasting minty toothpaste and mouthwash, and underneath that the essence of Stephen he was after. When he pulled back and attacked Stephen’s neck with lips, teeth and tongue, the younger man started whining, arms tightening around him and legs lifting to wrap around Cutter’s legs, trapping their cocks and his hand between their bodies. 

Cutter growled and bit down on the juncture of Stephen’s neck and shoulder, and when Stephen went limp he pulled his hand free to grope in the bedside table for the lube. He flipped the lid one-handed, and let some of the thick liquid drip onto his fingers. Sliding his hand between Stephen’s legs, he carefully and thoroughly lubricated the puckered hole, sliding his finger in and out until there was no restriction. When he looked up, Stephen’s eyes were shut tight, and he was panting, short, sharp breaths that made his cock jump. Cutter grinned. He loved seeing Stephen lose it like this, seeing him become a completely sensual being without inhibition or capability of thought. 

Leaning down again, he took the mushroom-shaped head into his mouth and sucked hard as he added a second finger to Stephen’s hole and twisted it. Stephen whimpered and started to beg, shaking.

Cutter wiped the extra lube onto his cock and slid up to give Stephen’s long, slender neck a little more attention. Lining up, he slowly and steadily pushed into Stephen’s body, feeling the sphincter twitching as Stephen concentrated on staying open for him. “It’s alright,” Cutter whispered. “Let go. You’re mine. Give yourself to me.”

Stephen’s eyes opened and he locked gazes with Cutter as he breathed out slowly. Cutter licked his lips and Stephen’s eyes fastened on them. Cutter sank in the rest of the way and started thrusting slowly, gently, until Stephen relaxed completely and his eyes drifted shut again. 

Cutter held the pace until he was close to overwhelmed, then he sped up his strokes, glancing off Stephen’s prostate on every thrust, feeling the body under him jerking, hearing a gasp at every strike.

“Nick, please,” Stephen whispered brokenly. 

And Cutter changed his angle just a bit, just enough that every plunge was a direct hit on the little gland. Stephen yelled his name and almost convulsed in his climax, body curling in on itself and clamping down on Cutter’s cock like a vice. 

Cutter groaned, “Jesus, Stephen,” and his balls tightened and every bit of energy he possessed erupted through the end of his cock. He collapsed along Stephen’s limp body, gasping for breath and feeling his heart hammering. 

He had no idea how long they lay there before Stephen stirred, just a little, and whispered, “Fucking hell,” as he turned wide cobalt eyes onto Cutter.

Cutter chuckled weakly. “Yeah. Couldn’t have said it better, myself.” He raised his head with difficulty to look at Stephen. “You okay?”

Stephen nodded. “I think so. That was incredible.” His eyelids drooped a bit. “But now I really am exhausted. I thought I was earlier, but that was nowhere near this.”

Dragging himself, yawning, out of bed, Cutter staggered into the loo for a flannel. He wiped them both clean and collapsed onto the mattress, snuggling down next to his lover. There was only one last thing he needed to do.

He looked straight into Stephen’s eyes, willing him to believe, and said, “I love you, Stephen Hart. That’s the one thing I hope you never forget. No matter what we lose, no matter what gets broken into pieces in your memories, if you can hold onto that one thing, then we’ll be fine.”

The bright blue of Stephen’s eyes blurred with joyful tears, and the brilliance of his smile lit up the room. “We’ll be fine,” he agreed softly.

End


End file.
